"Gee, Cap," said Dead-Eye suddenly. "That's bad, huh?"
"Yes, Dead-Eye," Wing said softly. "It's bad. Very bad."
"You'll fix it, won't you, Cap?" Dead-Eye asked, and his light-blue eyes were trusting. "You can do anything, Cap. Why, didn't you find Elizabeth for me?"
Wing stared at Dead-Eye's hulking figure.
Finally he said, "I think this will be slightly more difficult than picking Elizabeth out of a museum case, Dead-Eye."
Earth below them now, its diadem of clouds winking in the reflected shafts of light from the moon.
What danger lay there? What danger so great that they must let a victory become a might-have-been. What catastrophe so important that a fight for interplanetary life was dismissed casually with the signal.
Curt Wing shrugged his shoulders, heard that incessant signal boring monotonously into his ears.
Then the breaking rockets were kicking, the high thin wail as the thickening atmosphere scratched along the black ship's bulk was deepening, and the deceleration was pushing lazy hands against him, urging him against the duralloy bulwark at his back.